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Sunday, December 4, 2016

Garley Building Fire (嘉利大夏火灾)

Almost every country would have one sort of haunted building
or another. In Malaysia we have the Highland Towers, in Taiwan we have the Hua’guo
Cinema and in Hong Kong there was once a Garley Building. However, on November
20th, 1996, a fire took place in the 16-story building located at
232-240 Nathan Road, Jordan, Hong Kong which has taken 41 lives and 81
injuries. The Garley building was demolished and a new building was built.

Before the fire:

Before the Garley Building fire, A music recording company,
PolyGram (宝丽金) was at the 10th floor of Garley Building.
This company served many of those famous Hong Kong singers such as Alan Tam (谭咏麟),
Priscilla Chan Wan Han (陈慧娴) etc.

Before the fire incident, Priscilla Chan went to the
recording studio to record her songs. Strangely, the lift which was supposed to
stop at the 10th floor failed to stop. Instead it went up to the 15th
floor. When the lift door opened, the scene was total pitched blacked as if
being burnt by fire. So, Priscilla Chan felt very awkward and she just
attributed what she saw as the work-in-progress of renovation work. And she
subsequently returned to the 10th floor.

However, the lift could only reach 9th floor and
stopped. Priscilla had no choice but to walk up to the 10th floor.
During a casual conversation, she asked her colleagues if the 15th
floor was on renovation but the answer was negative. Priscilla was not convinced
so she returned to the 15th floor and to her astonishment, a few
companies on the 15th floor were in normal operation.

At first, Priscilla thought it was her mind that was playing
the tricks. Three months later, the fire broke out and the 15th
floor was the hardest hit area which caused 20 odd lives. Believe it or not,
the above story was told during an interview before the fire incident and there
are many audiences too.

During the fire:

A singer was recording his song on November 20th
as usual in the recording studio with other stuffs. They were oblivious about
the fire outbreak. Suddenly the singer claimed to have heard the voice of a boy
saying to him: “Fire! Run for your life!”

The singer looked around but there was no one around. So, he
continued to do the recording and the voice came up again: “Run for your life!
Fire outside!”

This time, this singer thought he should go out to
investigate and he hinted the recording crews to go out to investigate. And to
their horror, they found the walkway was filled with smoke. All of them
immediately wet themselves with water and use wet towers to cover themselves
and ran down the building using the emergency exit.

Luckily, all of them were saved. Even until today, the
singer kept wondering who or what had saved their lives.

After the fire:

There are many classic ghost stories from Garley Building:

Right after the tragic fire incident, the Police received
many prank calls where ladies who lodged police reports were yelling for help
frantically shouting there was a fire. But when the fire department and police
personnel arrived at the Garley Building, there was no one and no fire
incident. in the Garley Building. After the police traced the lines used to
make prank calls, they found that the phone number was cancelled for quite a
long time.

Other than that, many people living nearby claimed to have
seen a total of 20 to 30 shadows lingered by the windows at night. Yet someone
claimed to have seen many human faces appeared with agonising expressions
surfaced on the building wall.

After the Garley fire, the property prices around the building
fallen drastically because of those ghost stories. Mr. Yu was not a believer in
supernatural things and he was attracted to the super low rental charges at
that time. So he rented two office units in a commercial building just opposite
to the Garley Building: one for his stuffs accommodation and dwelling and the
other as his office.

One night, a plum lady stuff felt her body was lifted into
the air during her sleep. When she opened her eyes, she slowly returned into
her bed. The lady thought she was just dreaming and she continued to stay on.
Then one night Mrs. Yu visited the washroom in the midst of the night and she
heard a crowd was crying pitifully and shouting for help, she immediately returned
to her bed and dared not investigate further.

Within a period of 3 years, Mr. Yu, his family and stuffs
had experienced more than 10 strange incidents. The most unforgettable one
happened at the beginning of 2000 where Mrs. Yu was being hag ridden and she
couldn’t move her body or talk. After a while, her Buddha locket suddenly
exploded and only after that she could move again. As recalled by Mrs. Yu,
maybe the Buddha has prevented the spiritual attack.

In another incident, an alarm clock in Mr. Yu’s bedroom
suddenly rang. The clock continued to rang even he had repeatedly pressed on
the stop button. So, he decided to remove the batteries. In any logical
circumstances, the alarm clock should immediately stop. Instead, it continued
to ring for quite a while.

Finally, Mr. Yu decided to move out from the building
because the Garley building was about to be demolished.

A night watchman, Chan claimed to have seen a young couple
entered a lift compartment to flirt from CCTV in his control room. He thought
the couple didn’t disturb anyone so he just left them alone. The next morning,
When Chan was off duty, he met the couple again. So, he casually asked them the
reason that couple went into the lift. Surprisingly, the couple replied that
they were in their apartment the whole night. Disbelieved, Chan returned to the
control room to check the CCTV recording. And to his astonishment, he couldn’t
find the clip showing the young couple in the lift anymore. Until today, Chan
still wonders if the couple he saw previous night was real or…

During the demolition
work:

The fire incident in 1996 in Carley Building has taken 40
lives and injured another 80. Naturally that area was very much feared off
after the tragic incident, and the building was touted as a haunted building.
It was abandoned until 2003 when the building was demolished to make way for a
new building. At first, people thought with the demolishing of the Carley
Building; old tragic memory could also be removed. However, strange things
continued…

One week after the commencement of demolition work, a worker
was seriously injured by a sudden explosion of a hellion fire extinguisher.
Frankly speaking, a worksite accident can hardly be linked with the
supernatural. But the over 100kg steel vessel that was first exploded first
injuring a worker and then flew from the 3rd floor of worksite
towards the 16th floor of the opposite building; and then rebounded
back to the worksite; in the process created some debris which in turn injured
a by passer did cause some concerns to the site personnel.

Following the demolition of Garley Building, gone are those
spooky tales as the witness of a piece of modern day Hong Kong urban legend.